Your browser does not support iframes. Cincinnati Reds closer Aroldis Chapman will have surgery Thursday to have a steel plate implanted above his left eye as a result of a fracture he suffered when he was hit in the face by a line drive during Wednesday's exhibition game against the Kansas City Royals. Team doctor Timothy Kremchek said the metal plate would remain in place permanently and that Chapman had a concussion but no other brain or eye injury. "He's a very lucky guy," Kremcheck said.

The Jan. 20 article "Link Between Implants, Immune Disease Is Seen" was an important and thorough comment on the widely controversial subject concerning silicone breast implants and their possible connection with the arthritis diseases. The Arthritis Foundation recognizes that there are a growing number of anecdotal reports and population studies relating certain rheumatic diseases with silicone breast implants. The national Arthritis Foundation and the Southern California chapter are continually surveying and reviewing the literature regarding this subject and, on a local level, the Southern California chapter is funding a research project at UCLA to determine how silicone interacts with the immune system.

USC will be constructing a new building for bioscience research, thanks in part to a $50-million gift from Gary K. Michelson, a retired orthopedic surgeon and inventor of spinal implants and other medical devices, the university is announcing Monday. The new, 190,000-square-foot USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience will house up to 30 labs investigating a range of biomedical topics. With groundbreaking expected later this year and completion in three years, it will be located at the southwest quadrant of the main campus south of downtown Los Angeles.

Listen up! Three scientists have won the 2013 Lasker Award for clinical research for pioneering work on cochlear implants that have given the profoundly deaf the ability to hear. The decades of groundbreaking research by Graeme M. Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair and Blake S. Wilson - often in spite of overwhelming technical challenges and disapproval from their scientific peers - drew high praise from experts. "These three scientists had the grit to pick 'impossible' projects and the courage to remain steadfast in the face of failure and criticism," Gerard O'Donoghue of the National Institute for Health Research in England wrote in an article for the New England Journal of Medicine.

WASHINGTON – Following a spike in reported complications, the Food and Drug Administration released an updated advisory Wednesday about a surgical mesh implanted in women to strengthen vaginal tissue that can become weakened, especially after childbirth. In its report, the FDA says a review of industry literature and the adverse event reports has shown little evidence that the device, which is implanted vaginally or abdominally, improves pelvic organ prolapse, where a woman's uterus, bladder, or rectum can slip out of place.

I was pleased to see "Speaking of Implants" (Feb. 24) about how Jenny Jones decided to "come out" with her personal tales of the negative effects that breast implants have had on her body. It is great that we now have a public figure speaking out and informing the public on the dangers that accompany breast implants. EVA FIELDS North Hollywood

February 28, 2012 | By Michelle Andrews, Special to the Los Angeles Times

In the heated debate over to what extent religiously affiliated employers should be required to provide free contraception for workers, no one has talked much about what methods are available to women who want to prevent pregnancy and how their choices might change if cost were removed from the equation. But it's an important subject. With prices ranging from about $1 for a condom to more than $800 for an intrauterine device (IUD), some of these women - maybe a lot of them - might switch methods if they could afford to. That's exactly what manywomen's healthadvocates hope.

Plastic surgeons are genuinely concerned with the current breast implant controversy, and wish to do what is best for their patients. Many important issues are being ignored by the FDA and the news media. Your conclusion (editorial, Jan. 7) that Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler did the right thing with the moratorium on breast implants was erroneous because you did not consider some of these other issues. Kessler has focused on breast implants to the point that he is ignoring all the other types of exposure of the population to silicone.

Federal health officials approved a novel surgically implanted ear device that may help Americans frustrated with regular hearing aids to hear better. Symphonix Inc.'s Vibrant Soundbridge is for a type of moderate-to-severe hearing loss that afflicts millions of Americans. The loss is caused by problems with nerves vital for sound. Regular hearing aids help many of these people by magnifying sound.

Fans of the television series "Lost" are licking their lips in anticipation of a new cyber-themed spy thriller called "Intelligence. " The show, which premieres on CBS on Tuesday, stars Josh Holloway, who stole hearts and won accolades for his portrayal of the rakish con man James "Sawyer" Ford on "Lost. " "Lost" intrigued viewers with the ominous mysteries of a mythical island for six seasons, and aired its controversial finale in 2010. After that, Holloway strayed from television in favor of film, appearing in "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," "Paranoia" and "Battle of the Year.

Lakewood resident Kathleen Rivas was introduced by the Keck School of Medicine of USC as the first patient to get an implanted responsive brain device that was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat epilepsy. Rivas had the device surgically implanted this month. It detects and then directly responds to abnormal brain activity to prevent seizures.

PARIS -- The founder of a French company that produced substandard breast implants at the center of an international health scare was convicted of fraud Tuesday and sentenced to four years in jail. Jean-Claude Mas, 74, was found guilty of aggravated fraud by a court in the southern French city of Marseille. Mas' company, Poly Implant Prothèse, or PIP, sparked a global scandal after its implants, which contained non-authorized silicone meant for industrial use and not for humans, were found to run a higher-than-average risk of rupturing or leaking.

Listen up! Three scientists have won the 2013 Lasker Award for clinical research for pioneering work on cochlear implants that have given the profoundly deaf the ability to hear. The decades of groundbreaking research by Graeme M. Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair and Blake S. Wilson - often in spite of overwhelming technical challenges and disapproval from their scientific peers - drew high praise from experts. "These three scientists had the grit to pick 'impossible' projects and the courage to remain steadfast in the face of failure and criticism," Gerard O'Donoghue of the National Institute for Health Research in England wrote in an article for the New England Journal of Medicine.

Poor Ethan. The protagonist of "Implanted" is a young man (Justice Leak) coming out of experimental surgery with memory problems, emotional trauma and anger at the doctor-dad who appears to control his life. Ethan is also learning that … all is not as it seems. But in the regrettably amateurish hands of writer-director Thomas Verrette, Ethan's journey toward the truth feels more like watching someone wandering through one of those pharmaceutical commercials with a laundry list of side effects.

In courtrooms, on therapists' couches and across the kitchen table, we count on the trustworthiness of our memories. But brain scientists are increasingly demonstrating that our recollections don't exactly deserve the faith we put in them. They can be self-servingly Photoshopped, nudged off the mark by suggestion, and corrupted by being dragged out and rehashed. Just how flimsy are the foundations of memory? So flimsy that in a neuroscience lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers were able to fabricate fearful memories and implant them in the brains of mice using a few electrical probes, some photo-sensitive chemicals and a miniature flashlight.

A powerful National Institutes of Health committee Monday approved the first experiment outside the government involving the transfer of foreign genes into humans. The Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee unanimously endorsed a plan by researchers from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., to insert foreign genes into cancer-stricken immune cells of children with leukemia, said Dr. Nelson Wivel, director of the Office of Recombinant DNA Activities.

Russell Harvard plays the deaf brother in a dysfunctional family in "Tribes" at the Mark Taper Forum through April 14. The Austin, Texas-based actor, who won a Drama League Award for the role off-Broadway, will move with the production to the La Jolla Playhouse from June 25 through July 21. He spoke in his Taper dressing room. FULL COVERAGE: 2013 Spring arts preview Do you feel sympathetic to your character, who feels marginalized because he's deaf? I do, but not with my family.

Some are fascinated with 3-D printing. One man can't get it out of his head. An unidentified man had 75% of his skull replaced with a 3-D printed implant made by Oxford Performance Materials, a Connecticut company. The surgery this week was the first time a patient received an implant made specifically for him using 3-D printing technology. The patient, whose name and injury OPM would not disclose, had his head scanned as part of the procedure. The operation marks a big step in the advancement of 3-D printing technology, the company said.